Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

The Pleasure of a Steak at Home

A slab of seared rib-eye and a set of surprising sauces.Credit
Grant Cornett for The New York Times. Food stylist: Michelle Gatton. Prop stylist: Theo Vamvounakis.

After staring at the bill for a ridiculously overpriced and not very good rib-eye at a famous steakhouse in Chicago — replete with a sauce so banal it may as well have been ketchup, and served with attitude, too — I remembered I could do better at home. I went to my local butcher (which in my neighborhood just happens to be called the Local Butcher Shop) and paid $60 for a glorious, two-inch thick, fat-laden rib-eye. The plan was to blow the minds of three guests with a piece of meat so good it needed no sauce — and then pair it with sauces that were irresistible on their own.

Sixty dollars may sound like a lot of cash for a piece of meat, but if it’s local and well raised, with better flavor, texture and karma than cheaper commodity beef, it’s worth it for a table of four. While the idea of creating a one-night steakhouse at home may sound self-indulgent, it’s also unreservedly fun, and as you do the work yourself, the final bill is actually pretty tame.

Because I don’t cook 100 steaks a day, I knew I’d have to be careful not to ruin this gorgeous slab. I grilled it, although if I’d cooked it in a pan, my method would have been similar. It’s actually possible to achieve nicely cooked meat, with moderate portions of everything from rare to medium in one steak, using two unusual but easy techniques I’ve refined through years of mistake-making.

One thing I’ve learned is that when you cook a cut that’s more roast- than steak-size, you cannot just blast away over direct heat. If you do, the outside will burn, the meat near the surface will quickly become overdone and the center will remain raw. Instead, you want to use low heat to do most of the work for you, and then accelerate to the searing stage to form the kind of crust for which people overpay in steakhouses. There are a few steps involved in doing it the right way, requiring a certain amount of patience and (unless you’re a pro) an instant-read thermometer, but both equipment and time are minimal.

You might think sauce is overkill with a cut like this — and you could indeed opt for only a beautiful olive oil, some lemon and a shower of salt — but then you’d have only half a blowout. Playing steakhouse chef means dreaming up the accompanying sauces that you’d most like to see on the table. I took a handful of old favorites and updated them with the most contemporary ideas I could think of. My favorite is what I call ‘‘blue butter,’’ a blend of blue cheese and butter, about which one of my friends said with a sigh, ‘‘I wish I didn’t know about this.’’

I’m glad I do. With the sauces made and the steak purchased and readied earlier that day, the last-minute prep for this meal was well under an hour. I grilled corn along with the steak, mixed a vinaigrette for the salad and sliced tomatoes. Then I sliced the steak and served it family-style with a chilled light red wine. No one seemed to miss the haughty atmosphere, and this midsummer feast would have been cheap at twice the price — and still less than the steakhouse bill for two.